Military Dragged Feet on Bomb-Proof Vehicles (Updated Again)

The Marine Corps waited over a year before acting on an "priority 1 urgent" request to send blast-resistant vehicles to Iraq, DANGER ROOM has learned.

According to a Marine Corps document provided to DANGER ROOM, the request for over 1,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles came in February, 2005. A formal call to fulfill that order did not emerge until November, 2006. "There is an immediate need for an MRAP vehicle capability to increase survivability and mobility of Marines operating in a hazardous fire area against known threats," the 2005 "universal need statement" notes.

Back then — as now — improvised explosive devices, or IEDs — represented the deadliest threat to American troops in the region. "The expanded use" of these bombs "requires a more robust family of vehicle capable of surviving the IED… threat," the document adds. "MRAP-designed vehicles represent a significant increase in their survivability baseline over existing motor vehicle equipment and will mitigate… casualties resulting from IED[s]."

"The [Marines] cannot continue to lose… serious and grave casualties to IED[s]… when a commercial off the shelf capability exists to mitigate these threats," the request continues.

Despite the stark language, however, that request was not acted upon. Instead, the Marine Corps waited until November, 2006 to issue a formal request for proposals to buy approximately 1,200 MRAPs.

Bill Johnson-Miles, a Marine Corps spokesman, tells DANGER ROOM that the delay was perfectly justified. "We can’t just take the request from them, and put it out on the street," he says.

A lack of manufacturing capability kept the Marines from issuing that request, Johnson-Miller adds. "There just wasn’t anybody that could meet those requirements," he says. "The industrial base wasn’t there."

Previously, the only American maker of MRAP-style vehicles was Force Protection, Inc., a small firm from Ladson, South Carolina. During the early days of the Iraq insurgency, the firm used a staff of 12 to hand-build a single vehicle per month. By the fall of 2006, 400 employees were cranking out a vehicle per day, and the company had signed partnership agreements with some of the giants of the defense industry, including General Dynamics and BAE Systems.

Delays in responding to requests from the field are not uncommon in the Defense Department’s often-byzantine bureaucracy for buying equipment. But what sets the MRAP request apart is the urgency of the plea — and the tremendous stakes involved. Since the Iraq insurgency began, improvised bombs have been responsible for 1,373 of the nearly 3,422 American servicemembers killed in action, according to icasualties.org.

The military, as far back as 2004 had requested industry information on MRAP vehicles. And in May, 2006, the Marines asked for a relative handful of the vehicles — just 185 in all. Military interest quickly increased after a small number of MRAPs begun to trickle to the region. Orders grew to 4,060 vehicles, then to 7,774. Now, the Army and Marine Corps are requesting nearly 18,000 vehicles to replace the entire Humvee fleet. Defense Secretary Gates now calls MRAP the Pentagon’s "highest priority" target for new equipment.

To Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the stunted response is another example of how "the suits and the bureaucrats in Washington don’t seem to have the same sense of urgency as the guys in the field."

"This is what happens when industry isn’t put on a war footing," he adds. "It’s like the military families are at war, and everyone else is out shopping."

Here’s The Thing With Ad Blockers

We get it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for. But ads help us keep the lights on. So, add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We’d really appreciate it.